abit of proclaiming
herself the most ill-favored of women, in order that she might--as in
common politeness was inevitable--be contradicted and reassured. It
was since she had come to live in Europe that she had begun to take the
matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely exercised here, had
suggested to her that a woman's first duty is not to be beautiful, but
to be pleasing, and she encountered so many women who pleased without
beauty that she began to feel that she had discovered her mission. She
had once heard an enthusiastic musician, out of patience with a gifted
bungler, declare that a fine voice is really an obstacle to singing
properly; and it occurred to her that it might perhaps be equally true
that a beautiful face is an obstacle to the acquisition of charming
manners. Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to be exquisitely agreeable, and
she brought to the task a really touching devotion. How well she would
have succeeded I am unable to say; unfortunately she broke off in the
middle. Her own excuse was the want of encouragement in her immediate
circle. But I am inclined to think that she had not a real genius for
the matter, or she would have pursued the charming art for itself. The
poor lady was very incomplete. She fell back upon the harmonies of the
toilet, which she thoroughly understood, and contented herself with
dressing in perfection. She lived in Paris, which she pretended to
detest, because it was only in Paris that one could find things to
exactly suit one's complexion. Besides out of Paris it was always more
or less of a trouble to get ten-button gloves. When she railed at this
serviceable city and you asked her where she would prefer to reside, she
returned some very unexpected answer. She would say in Copenhagen, or
in Barcelona; having, while making the tour of Europe, spent a couple
of days at each of these places. On the whole, with her poetic furbelows
and her misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her,
a decidedly interesting woman. She was naturally shy, and if she had
been born a beauty, she would (having no vanity) probably have remained
shy. Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers. She
despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly
at liberty not to marry him. She had been in love with a clever man
who had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the